Air pollution, a real public health issue in Thailand

Bangkok, Thailand, January 19, 2022. AP - Wally Santana

Text by: Carol Isoux

3 mins

The annual wave of air pollution has arrived in Bangkok.

The phenomenon is a major public health problem that puts poor populations in the front line.

However, almost no measures have yet been taken, despite the growing mobilization of the civilian population.

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From our correspondent in Bangkok,

Like every tropical winter now, Bangkok, and even more so the cities in the north of the country, such as Chiang Mai, are gradually finding themselves under a veil of fine particle pollution created by a conjunction of factors: exhaust gases, industrial pollution, agricultural burning combined to the climate.

Like every year, Bangkok finds itself neck and neck in terms of air pollution with megalopolises like Beijing.

This

is a major public health problem, with scientists attributing to it a large part of the increase in the number of strokes, respiratory diseases and cancers, particularly in increasingly young patients.

It is the poor populations who suffer the most from this, because they live in low houses where the concentration rates are particularly high, unlike the apartments of the wealthy populations, located high up, with airtight windows, which allow the use of air purifiers.

The "acceptable" particle rate standards are already doubled compared to European standards here.

The situation is therefore worrying. 

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A growing mobilization of the civilian population

Several groups of citizens are mobilized, one of them the Thailand Air Pur Network has just tabled a text, which wants to guarantee a healthy environment for all Thais, signed by nearly thirty thousand people, so that it can be debated in Parliament, but the procedures are extremely long and two previous texts have already been rejected by the government.

And this is where the demands of environmentalists meet those of pro-democracy activists, because in the current state of the Constitution, the government, and even the Prime Minister can unilaterally reject a text.

This is what has happened so far with all the attempts to put ecology on the government's agenda. 

Justice to the rescue

In desperation, the activists are appealing for international solidarity, and they have appealed in particular to a UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, David Boyd, who expressed his solidarity with the Thai activists.

The man has been the bane of governments in the region since he backed a lawsuit in Indonesia that recently convicted the Indonesian president and six members of his government for their inaction in support of an air healthy.

In the absence of democratic avenues for legislative amendments, the judicial route seems the most viable option.

Last year, a court ruled in favor of a farmer demanding that the government declare a state of environmental emergency in the north of the country.

The government appealed, but this first judgment raised a lot of hope in activist circles, hope that justice could be an ally in the fight for a healthier environment for all. 

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